Processing like a 3-Year-Old

Tonight we had an accident. No, not poop, or a drink, or toys, but the death...of a candle.
While he was brushing his teeth while sitting on our bathroom counter (as he always does), I was not paying attention and the next thing I hear is a crash on the bathroom floor and this unhappy scene. I wasn't really upset, but did let a few frustrated words exit my mouth...mostly because both of us had bare feet and the glass shards were everywhere. But I also said "oh, that makes me sad, that was my favorite candle" and then his world crumbled.
Mason slowly, painfully dissolves into utter sadness and misery with his face turning red and mouth curling into an incredible frown, then the tears started flowing. We are quickly learning that we have a sensitive one on our hands and he easily internalizes our emotions and gets upset if we are upset or angry.
"Why was it your favorite?" he asks, sniff, sniff.
"Well, because I really liked how it smelled."
"Why (sniff) did it (sniff) fall on (sniff) the floor?"
"Well, you accidentally hit it off when you were brushing your teeth."
"But why was it your favorite?"
"I liked it...it was pretty. It's OK, accidents happen. I'm not mad at you, I'm just sad that the candle broke." At this point, I pick it up off the floor and carefully let him smell it to prove how lovely it is. "See, doesn't it smell nice?"
I gave him some hugs and he calmed down, then Michael came in and helped start cleaning up the mess while I took Mason to his room to read books and go to bed. I tucked him in and turned off the light, but 5 minutes later heard him wailing in misery again and calling for me.
After I go in and find him standing next to his bed in tears, I sit down and he asks again: "Why (hiccup) was it your (sniff) favorite? (this seems to be the sticking point for him...I guess that he has ruined something I loved?) Why did it fall on the floor?" and we continue to process.
"The candle smelled good. But you know what, we can get a new one - we can go out tomorrow and get one together that we both like."
"A green one?!?" (it was ivory, but whatever).
"Sure we can get a green one. And we can find one that we both like the smell of."
"But why was it your favorite? Why did it fall on the floor?" (we go around and around for several minutes on this loop).
"Well, it is just a candle and I'm not sad any more. It was an accident and I can move on. You know, I am partly at fault because I wasn't paying attention and watching you. Next time, if we get a candle and we are brushing our teeth, I'll make sure to move it out of the way, so it doesn't fall on the floor."
Finally, we seem to break through. I cuddle with him for a minute, then get up to leave and he says brightly and succinctly:
"Tomorrow we go get another candle...after school...and you put it on the counter and then you move it, so it doesn't happen again."
You got it, buddy. It will only take a few allowances to buy me another Jo Malone candle, but good thing Mother's Day is coming up.

Kenzie - Month 4

I just read back to compare where Mason was at 4 months when I first blogged about it here. Seems she is right on track, though just now becoming verbal, which is entertaining. She has just this week started what they call "razzing" where she basically spits bubbles with a gurgling/sighing sound at the same time. It is just about the cutest darned thing.

(tech-savvy husband will insert voice recording here)

Today she woke up and starting "talking" like this:

(tech-savvy husband will insert voice recording here)

This girl loves to be naked. And loves to be outside. Hopefully a future as a nudist running through the WWC woods at dawn isn't the direction she's going in - though if it is...more power to her. Whenever we change her diaper, we give her a long stretch of naked-time where she just kicks around in the crib like she's been liberated. Of course, we have to keep a dry diaper strategically placed because she will inevitably pee, which she has on the mattress many times already. She tends to squirm around, so this is actually a very difficult task. She also loves her tummy time and has routinely turned from front to back as if it isn't a big deal (and has almost gone from front to back). What are we in for?
This week I also moved her up to the 6-9/12 month clothes. Although she had many cute 3-6 month things, it was getting a little ridiculous to leave her onesies unsnapped, just so she could wear them. As with all wardrobe shifts, I found a new batch of clothes I am completely in love with. Many thanks to Jeff & Leanne for gifting us Olive's old clothes. Ok, so there is a lot of pink, but it is manageable pink. And I didn't buy it, so I'm not making her "girly" on purpose.
We are routinely putting her down at 7pm every night. I think that's one mistake we made with Mason is we always kept him up too late (mind you, that was 8 or 9pm), but still...it always seemed to take longer to put him down than her. Granted, she's not a good sleeper during the day anymore. Gone are the days of 10 hour naps. No, no! She does a quick 20 minute nap in the car on trips into town and quickly wakes up whenever we open the door. I've succumbed to using the "baby crack swing" far too often, but I think even that is not working anymore. She is a tricky sleeper! But hopefully it's just a phase and she'll have more routine naps again.
I'm curious to see what she weighs, but it has to be in the 15-16 lbs range. Her hair is starting to thin along the back and sides - like old man hair - and seems to have light brown roots, which is interesting. I can't tell if she will loose it all and it will come back like Mason's or if the dark hair will win out. We are also waiting on her eye color, which currently sits at a bright blue. Mason's tended to be more dark, stormy gray, blue all along, so it didn't surprise me that it changed to hazel. Kenzie's really seem blue, so perhaps Dad's genes won out this time.
She is very attentive now when we sit her propped in the chair with the boppy behind her every morning as we do our breakfast routine. I think she is really taking in the process of making coffee and oatmeal. Or maybe it's just that the absence of a toddler in the house allows her to focus more carefully on what the adults are doing instead of dodging the constant barrage of hugs and kisses.

Backpacker Days

While packing away my winter coats, I decided it was also time to do some major purging of the tupperware containers full of clothes I've been keeping in the basement since forever. Now, to be fair, in the throws of pregnancy and post-pregnancy for the last three and a half years, I had to temporarily box up my normal-sized clothes and am slowly bringing them back out, but aside from that there are the things I've been keeping...for posterity. And a step after posterity comes hoarding. And I don't want to be on that TV show. So...I had to purge.
But what I've been keeping have been pieces of my past - memorabilia of my life. I've got a brown and white muu-muu that I have a picture of my Grandma Jean wearing in the 70's when I was a wee babe. I've got a vintage blue "shop shirt" that has an 'Audrey' name-patch on it I found in a consignment store. And I've also got this beat up towel that I've had for almost 14 years because this towel has a story.
My sophomore year in college, I decided to study abroad in London in the fall semester and Florence in the spring (the impetus being that I didn't really like and didn't fit in at UNC and a flyer for the London Honors program was slid under my door one day). While my parents had dutifully opened my eyes to traveling at a young age (my dad took me to Paris the summer before 8th grade and my mom always took us on weeks-long cross-country trips each year), I was relatively fearless when it came to living in and traveling through another country, but had never gone solo. Luckily, in England they speak English, so this made the prospect a bit easier.
I had scheduled my arrival to be about a week before the semester was starting, so I could get a short trip in. I arrived on the overnight flight at about 9 in the morning, dropped my bags off at the school office on Great Russell Street, packed a small blue Lowe backpack with clothes for the week, headed to the King's Cross train station, and caught the first train headed north to Edinburgh.
After the 4-hour trip through gorgeous countryside (I remember my jaw about dropping when we passed through Durham and York and could see the ancient cathedrals at the center of the towns - I'd never seen anything like it and they were just there), and meeting a nice telephone repair guy from the States, I checked into my hostel. By this point exhaustion and jet lag had set in and I was glad to see a bed. I did the usual sightseeing around town for a day, tried my first bowl of Alpen cereal, and took another train north to Sterling, then Pitlochry, then Inverness a few days later. By this point I had not showered in days and realized that I had not packed a towel in my pack. Luckily, the hostel I was staying at had a closet full of them and were willing to part with one for FREE. I was big on free, as a backpacker. I would dutifully write down every cent that I spent and worked extra hard to spend as little as possible. This often meant eating ravioli out of a can, subsisting on bread and cheese, and finding hostels that included a buffet breakfast and then take a roll, cheese, and fruit for lunch. I was obsessive about it. After returning to the States, I horrified my mother when we had a brunch at the Grove Park Inn and I proceeded to stash away a roll and mini box of cereal for later.
Back to the towel, which, of course, is the one you see here (it took me a while to realize it was a foot kicking a soccer ball...the rainbow color was the initial draw).

This towel has seen many countries, many hostels, and many, many bathrooms in its service to me. The towel's life with me goes something like this:

• Scotland (Inverness, Ediburgh, Pitlochry, Isle of Skye, Fort William)
• Wales (Snowdonia National Park, Tintern Abbey)
  
• England (York, Durham, Bath, Oxford, Salisbury, Stonehenge, Canterbury, Dover)
  
• Ireland (Dublin, Glendalough, Wicklow, Cliffs of Moher, Killarney, Waterford City)
  
• Italy (Florence, Ravenna, Bologna, San Marino, Urbino, Verona, Venice, Rome, Naples, Vesuvius, Pompeii, Sorrento, Salerno, Amalfi, Paestum, Lucca, Pisa, Elba, San Gimignano, Siena, Milan)
  
• Austria (Innsbruck, Salzburg, Hallstatt, Krems, Vienna)
  
• Switzerland (Geneva, Gryon, Lauterbrunnen Valley, Interlaken, Luzern)
• Liectenstein (Vaduz)
• Luxemborg (Clervaux)
  
• Germany (Munich, Fussen (Neuschwanstein), Mittenwald, Dinkelsbuhl, Berlin, Potsdam, Trier, Freiburg, Titisee)
• France (Paris, Nice, Chambord, Mont St-Michel, St-Malo)
  
• Spain (Barcelona, Madrid, Toledo, Pomplona, Sevilla, Jerez de la Frontera, Granada)
  
• Portugal (Lisbon)
  
• Belgium (Brugge)
• Netherlands (Amsterdam, The Hague, Utrecht, Apeldoorn)
  
• Denmark (Copenhagen)
• Czech Republic (Prague)
• Singapore
  
• Malaysia (Cherating, Pulau Perhentian, Malacca, Kuala Lumpur, Penang)
  
• Thailand (Krabi, Bangkok, Ayutthaya, Chang Mai, Pai, Mae Hong Son, Chang Rai, Chang Khong)
  
• Laos (Luang Prabang, Vang Vien, Vientiene)
  
• Vietnam (Hanoi, Ha Long Bay, Hue, Da Lat, Ho Chi Minh)
  
• Cambodia (Phnom Penh, Angkor)
  
• Indonesia (Bali - Ubud, Kuta)

Maybe someday I'll write about all these places...or maybe next year I'll make it my New Year's Resolution to blog about my travels in each country. Hmm....
Until then you can find this towel for sale at the Goodwill on Patton Ave. No one will know it's story, but hopefully it will live on and meet some other great adventure (I mean, even as a shop rag, it would be more exciting than sitting in a tupperware container in the basement for eternity!)

Mommy's To-Do List

I finally understand the phrase "silence is deafening." With the house devoid of a certain, lovable, talkative (and often yelling) toddler, I have become used to constant noise. Now that he and daddy are adventuring in Arizona for a week, baby girl and I are on our own in the house, which seems very big, very empty, and very, deliciously quiet. But it feels like a void, which is a little weird.
Nonetheless, I have quickly come up with a mental checklist of all of the things I want to accomplish this week with so much time on my hands (other than work, of course). You know as a Type-A mom requires myself to do.

• Wash sheets on all beds (check)
• Wash tablecloth (check)
• Break out the sewing machine and finally make her summer dress and bloomers (on second thought - after realizing the extreme number of clothes I already have for the summer, might postpone this project and do an 18 month dress instead)
• Break out the sewing machine to replace the velcro tabs on Mason's diapers (7 tabs removed, 1 replaced then needle broke)
  
• Recycle cardboard (check)
• Get a tack stuck in toe while fumbling around in the basement looking for the light (check)
  
• Wash all windows (no paper towels)
  
• Vacuum/dust all baseboards
• Vacuum carpets and swiffer floors (check)
  
• Clean bathrooms
• Video-logue our entire house (check! because it will never be this clean again)
  
• Create an Excel spreadsheet of all our belongings
• Go to Goodwill to find cheap shorts and jeans to make cutoffs (skirt check)
  
• Go to REI to get that cute running hoodie (check - on sale!)
• Retire her 3-6 month clothes and breakout the 6-9 month (check)
  
• Clean out toy boxes and take excess to Goodwill (check)
• Take old dress to Asheville Cleaners for the Eblen 'Prom Dress Drive' (check)
• Take busted speaker to The Amp Shop - per Michael (check)
  
• Clip baby girl's nails (check - twice)
  
• Clip Zola's claws (check)
• Put winter coats in basement (check)
  
• Figure out how to do a self-cleaning cycle on the washing machine (check)
  
• Catch up on returning phone calls (3 down - dad, Will, Stephen)
  
• Run and/or hike a couple of times and maybe get some yoga in (3 runs, 2 hikes)
  
• Catch up on all the movies I want to see (this could take a year - 2 so far)
  
• Blog ;)

So let's just see how well I do!

Sibs Montage I

April Fool's

This time last year I recall that Michael and I were chatting on Gmail. Now, I'd had an inkling for a few weeks, but wasn't completely positive. I'd taken a pregnancy test the third week of March because I was drinking a lot of wine and had a conscience with a healthy dose of paranoia - three things that don't go well together. It showed up with an ever-so-faint plus sign - so much so that I convinced myself I'd imagined the second line and passed it off as a negative test. But I wasn't totally convinced.
When we were talking online on April 1st, we were exchanging April Fool's jokes and I quipped "I'm pregnant" knowing that it might actually be true. It went something like this (thanks hubby for digging into the archives for this one):

2:32 PM

MO: As for that poster, that might be the coolest thing. Ever. Cooler than, well...anything witty that I can think of right now.

2:33 PM Girls: no it's not

2:36 PM MO: April Fools!

Girls: yeah

MO: i am so funny.

Girls: I'm pregnant!

2:37 PMMO: THAT IS THE STUPIDEST AND CRUELEST APRIL FOOLS EVER!

MO: April Fools!

(This is never going to get old)

2:38 PM Girls: It was old about 10 minutes ago before you started saying it.

2:42 PM MO: April Fools!

You used to think me funny. Are you getting tired of me?

2:47 PM Girls: Yes.

APRIL FOOL'S!

I'm pregnant.

I am hilarious!

I can't stop laughing at myself

MO: No, really. You are pregnant.

I meant to tell you.

Girls: Ouch, my side hurts, not because I'm laughing so hard, but because I"m pregnant.

2:48 PM

MO: APRIL FOOLS! Girls: I've got an e-newsletter to finish

2:51 PM MO: that's not funny.

3:33 PM MO: So, you aren't really pregnant, right?

But on Sunday, April 4th - Easter Sunday - I took Mason out first thing in the morning to let Michael sleep in and also picked up ingredients to make a yummy pancake breakfast. Really, it was an excuse to pick up another pregnancy test because my gut was telling me (literally, and figuratively) that something was different.
When I got home, I took the test and left in on the counter while I finished making breakfast. When I saw the result, I almost passed out on the floor, but calmly walked away (albeit shaking head to toe) to set the table. After Michael woke up and we casually ate breakfast together chatting about this and that. When we started clearing the table and I off-handedly mentioned "Oh yeah, I'm pregnant." The rest is, well...history, as they say.